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David

Last time, we reviewed Episode Four of Life Is Strange and gave our guesstimations as to what was really happening behind the scenes. So let’s see how they turned out.

First of all

It’s not a rape dungeon, IT’S ART!

“I hate Jefferson so much.”

Yeah…me too. At least he wasn’t raping the girls, despite what we thought last time. Although when you think about it, a graphic depiction of sexual abuse in the story probably would’ve been a major mood whiplash from the relatively lighthearted atmosphere we had been getting throughout the game. And it’s also worth noting that there wasn’t anything explicitly stating that what was going on was rape. We were the ones who screamed out RAPE DUNGEON! when it was first revealed. Needless to say though, it’s a relief that no one had to go through that horror.

“Yeah, he was just binding them up and taking photos of their drugged out faces. That’s not creepy at all.”

Speaking of which…I feel like Evil Hipster Bastard got derailed slightly. Yeah, his true nature was creepy as hell, but it was slightly cliche too. I dunno, I was thinking that he’d be revealed as the Magnificant Bastard Type rather than a younger hotter version of the Mad Doctor from the Cat Lady.

“I thought that it fit. He’s always been this cool type who is so passionate about photography. That’s one hipster stereotype, and on the other end of the spectrum, we have this know-it-all who thinks he’s above it all and is the greatest artist who ever artisted.”

Oh god, Jefferson’s a whiny teenager.

“So are you.”

I’ll admit to that, but I don’t go around drugging and kidnapping people. I don’t get off on the suffering of others.

“Yeah, you’re just into BDSM, hypnosis and sensory deprivation.”

Problem?

“…no.”

Good, because we’re getting off track. Jefferson is a psychopathic dickweed, and I enjoy kinky sex, so we’ll leave it there and move on. So it turns out that Jefferson was manipulating Nathan, though they had more of a father-son relationship than a blackmailer-blackmailee like we predicted. And he was setting Nathan up as the scapegoat for the whole shebang, though it turns out that Hipster Draco was responsible for the murder component of it. The first one, anyway. He ended up overdosing Rachel after kidnapping her, after trying to emulate his Evil Hipster Teacher/Daddy Surrogate. We find out that Nathan got killed offscreen for being too messy, which explains how Evil Hipster got ahold of his phone, and how he’ll be framed for the murders of Max, Chloe and potentially Victoria if she ends up in the Dark Room with you.

So we’re gonna jump to an alternate timeline.

San Fransisco

So, after getting our diary back, we first get ahold of one of Max’s selfies from the first day of school. Well, our first day of school. It’s surprisingly easy to bring Evil Hipster down, all we do is send a message to David and he gets Jefferson arrested. At the same time, we get to hug Kate and tell her things will be okay -I managed to overlook it’s corniness for the time being- and we hand in our awesome photo and win the Everyday Heroes award, and history changes so that we’re heading to San Fransisco for the gallery opening. All is happy.

“Ahem, allow me to rewind and show you exactly what happened when we were playing through this segment.”

*flashback*

Cat: …Where’s the tornado?

Max: Oh, everything’s perfect, I can finally relax-

Cat: DON’T GIVE ME THAT SHIT, THERE’S STILL A FUCKING TORNADO HEADING TO ARCADIA, HOW ARE YOU JUST FORGETTING THIS??

Daniel: *eats Cat’s popcorn*

Max: *convenient vision of tornado* Oh noes, I forgot about my vision of a tornado which I had been stressing about all week!

Cat: Thank GOD! Can we go back to saving the world now? Okay, rewind to- HOLY SHIT, WHAT’S HAPPENING TO REALITY?

*back to present*

…I was a little upset.

“It was hilarious.”

So we end up back in Arcadia Bay after destroying our photo. Still in the rape dungeon with Evil Hipster. He’s gonna kill us. But then, IT’S DAVID! HE’S COME TO SAVE THE- oh, right, we have to rewind over and over again to keep him from dying on us. It gets hilarious after a while; it’s hard to keep the suspense and tension when you have to go through all the stupid ways that David can die.

“Kick the cart!”

xD *kicks it an inch across the floor*

“For an ex army officer, that was kind of piss poor. So after playing an unexpected round of Dumb Ways To Die, Jefferson’s on the ground and David asks where Chloe is. We had to rewind for this one; it wasn’t that we didn’t want to send Jefferson to hell a little bit early, but David’s reaction to hearing that Chloe had been killed was too much for our emotions to handle.”

And I was scared that David would end up shooting himself afterwards.

“So we lied. Though of course, Cat over here insists that a better lie would’ve been to say that she doesn’t know, that she got separated at the party before getting drugged by Professor Creepy.”

Eh, that’s just me. We leave David to gather evidence in the bunker so that we can go get the photo we need from Warren to save Chloe. One thing I don’t get is how David got here in the first place; at first I thought that we had still sent him the message in the San Fransisco timeline, but the raid took place the day after we sent the text according to the photo timeline. So he found out about the rape dungeon on his own? It’s kinda a plot hole for me.

“Roll with it.”

Fine. It turns out that Max actually does know how to drive, and we drive out towards the diner, where Warren is. On the way, we receive a voice message from Nathan which broke my heart and made me cry.

“…I’m gonna take over. You go get a tissue.”

Thank you…

“We get about halfway before we have to make our way on foot. We save people thanks to our rewind powers, and we finally meet up with the other guy Cat has a crush on, along with Chloe’s mom and Frank. Cat lied again so that Frank wouldn’t lose it after hearing exactly how Rachel died, and after talking to Warren, we came to the conclusion that Max’s time travelling is the cause of the tornado. By this point, it’s obvious that the universe is trying to correct itself after Max went back in time to save Chloe; the universe has been trying to kill her all week, this tornado is just a more catastrophic measure. But Max isn’t that far ahead yet. We save Princess Chloe and end up heading towards the lighthouse with her before we end up in a series of parallel universes which aim to drive us crazy, with creepy versions of our peers judging us and torturing us about our decisions, and-

Wait a minute.

…

Cat? Take your time, go make yourself a cup of tea.

“Okay, now that I’ve put the Cat out for a while…there’s a hilariously meta joke about their infamous bottle puzzle from Episode Two, which I have to appreciate. Games which make fun of themselves are awesome games. We meet an alternate version of ourselves who accuses us of being a manipulative little shit who messes with time in order to get people to like us, which I imagine that Cat would appreciate for character development reasons. And then there’s a sequence which goes on forever where we have to go through everything we did with Chloe throughout the series before we wake up with Chloe at the lighthouse. And that was exhausting as fuck. Cat, you take over.”

Final Choice

Okay. But don’t drink my tea. Ah, we’re here. So after all that, our suspicions from last episode turn out to be correct. We can either save Arcadia Bay by going back in time and letting Nathan shoot Chloe, or say “Fuck Arcadia Bay!” and ride off with Chloe into the sunset. It shouldn’t be hard to guess which we chose. Saving Chloe would’ve only been delaying the inevitable; the universe would’ve gone on trying to remedy the inconsistency until Chloe died, and at the cost of too many people. We’d have more and more natural disasters trying to wipe them both out, and everything would be fucked up. And as we said before, letting Chloe die then would resolve all the problems we’ve faced this series, although it would mean that our decisions in the end wouldn’t matter, which sucks. And we finish with Chloe’s funeral…where there’s still the evil blue butterfly of doom resting on her coffin. End scene.
“Okay Madigan, we’re nearly done. Any last words?”

Two. Rachel Amber.

“…okay, you’re gonna have to keep going.”

Throughout the series, I kept waiting and waiting for Rachel Amber to show up. She had been so raved about and so built up, and I expected her to appear during the big hallucination. And there was the deer! It’s obviously Rachel’s spirit animal, which ended up directing us to her grave. So…what? Is she really just an ordinary human? I’m disappointed.

“That’s why I think that season two will revolve around her and her respective supernatural ability.”

Hopefully. I need resolution.

And with that, we’re done with the recap. Personally, I enjoyed this series. Most of the music from the soundtrack is now on my iPad, I loved the characters, the concept, and overall, it was just a beautiful game.

“Except your choices don’t matter in the end.”

Yeah…I’m hoping that they will in season two, if they choose to make one. It would be cool to see our choices from season one carry over, but if it’s following Rachel Amber, then that would be unlikely. Unless it involves Rachel somehow rewinding before her death to make sure that there’s enough clues for Max and Chloe to find out what happened to her.

“Please write a fanfiction about that.”

Ugh…but I’m tired. I need more tea. And with that, I’m done ranting. Also, it’s worth mentioning that I turned 18 two months ago. So I’m now legally responsible for my crappy decisions. I can also legally sleep with Daniel.